What’s On Your Wall? (Episode 2)

Shush! No crap! Just watching this!

The video is made by a famous youtuber named Joe Sugg (aka ThatcherJoe). What have you seen on his bedroom wall? If you were not aware of this important detail, I suggest you to replay the youtube video again until you find it out.

Here it is! It turns to be a copy of a painting. But in fact, it is not a painting, it’s a graffiti on the wall of a pubilc building. “Another damage by an idle teenage!” Are you complaining the bad behavior of these kind of rebellious kids?  “Lack of discipline?” “Uneducated?” “Unruly?”…That’s quite enough! What you regard as a “vandalism” is actually a great artpiece. “Wait, what are you talking about? You see it’s a…” Shush again! Calm yourself down, let me tell you the real meaning behind this unusual graffiti:

The graffiti “Flower Thrower” was made by Banksy at West Bank, Palestine in 2005.  Here is some essential knowledge for you to undersand the background of the graffiti:

Palestine has been occupied by the Israeli army since 1967. In 2002 the Israeli government began building a wall separating the occupied territories from Israel, much of it not authorized by international law. This is also known as the “Segregation Wall” in certain circles. (Quoted from “Banksy who? Who Is Banksy?”)

Painting this wall with satirical graffiti in 2005, many of the pieces illustrating life on the other side, was one of the stunts which Banksy received most media attention for.

Secretive “guerrilla” artist Banksy has decorated Israel’s controversial West Bank barrier with satirical images of life on the other side. The nine paintings were created on the Palestinian side of the barrier. (Quoted from the BBC NEWS Report “Art prankster sprays Israeli wall”)

Balabalabala….We needed the fact of one artpiece was maded, it is so-called “art history”. But if you are not a professional student of art, will you able to understand an art painting? I think the answer should be “yes”. All of us have our personal feelings, and of course the artists also do, try to find out the thought hiding in the lines and colours, realize what he/she wanted to express to the viewers, both you and the artist have the same feelings on the equal level. Then, Wahla! You got it!

And now back to the topic of Banksy’s graffiti “Flower Thrower”, it use a satirical trick (replacing the oncendiary,  grenade, stone or somthing else with a brunch of flower in the protester’s hand) to expess the rationality counterwork against the dictatorship of government. Sometimes such a slient pledge is more powerful than a real revolt.

When you see a graffiti on a street corner, remember to have a think what the kid want to say other than complaining his/her misbehavior. This will be my little suggestion for you.

Lion On Films (Volume 3)

Regarding as the leading character of the fifth generation of Chinese director, Zhang Yimou’s visual language in the early years was full of impact power: “Red Sorghum” was ended up with a scene of thoroughly red, “Ju Dou” was ended up with a scene of buring fire, “The Story of Qiu Ju” was ended up with a scene of fatuous face. There all seem to be shouting at the film viewer with the reprimand “Just have a good look! What you have seen are the Chinese People from the real life!” But by now, he is start to pursue the ostensible beauty of form (in represented of “The Flowers of War”)  and the sentiment of past (in represented of “Under the Hawthorn Tree” and “Coming Home”) overly.

In contast with Zhang Yimou’s profundity and straightforwardness, Gu Changwei, who had served as Zhang’s cinematographer for several times, his films tend to be more humane. At the end of “Peacock”, the peacock, which was the imagery symbol of the film, serenely spreaded its tail and displaying the beautiful feathers after the leaving of the rowdy family members. And when the film “And the Spring Comes” was about to over, there appeared a fantasy scene of Wang Cailing, the poor film character suffering a tragic fate, indulging in her singing performance on the stage of the National Theatre. Such arrangement of these detail plots reflects that: although Gu shows the harsh reality and unfair fate, apart from these, he also keeps the visible hope for the people in his films.

*The film criticism was written by Simplified Chinese at first (which is my mother tongue), then I translated into English for your reading convenience. And down there is the original version.

作为中国第五代导演的领军人物，早年的张艺谋的镜头语言充满冲击性力量：《红高粱》最后的一片红、《菊豆》最后的一场火、《秋菊打官司》最后的一脸愣，仿佛冲着观众叫嚷着“好好瞧瞧！这就是现实中的中国人！”现在他则开始过度追求形式美（《金陵十三钗》）与时代情怀（《山楂树之恋》、《归来》）。

相较于张艺谋的直接深刻，多次担任其摄影的顾长卫则“更近乎于人情”。在《孔雀》结尾，一众人咋咋呼呼地走后孔雀独在原处欣然开屏；于《立春》未了，更是有意安排了王彩玲登上国家大剧院的舞台纵声放歌的幻想情景…他所展现的是无情的现实与不公的命运，然而除此之外，他却给人们保留下可见的希望。

Lion On Films (Volume 2)

Once upon a time, I was checking the customer reviews on the movie discs “Fanny and Alexander”  (The Criterion Collection Version) in Amazon randomly. And I have seen “the most helpful critical review” published by an professor of economics who came from Ingmar Bergman’s hometown – Sweden, which said: “it was impossible to find any information about the region until you opened the package, and found out that there was a mismatch of regions.” And the following replies all told him the obvious fact such as “I’m surprised you didn’t know as the region A coding is common knowledge with Criterion. You should have kept it and bought either a m/r player or spare Region A machine.” Besides this interesting “worst” review, there was even a customer complaining that: “IT IS NOT A CHRISTMAS MOVIE!”…

Surely, what Ingmar Bergman wanted to represent in this almost 3-hour masterpiece was not only the festive occasion of the during the big family’s Christmas reunion. Continuing his early film “Wild Strawberries”, to express the open and pluralistic thinking of life through the experience from external events. This kind of internal discussion had run through his entire film career. Especially in his representative work “The Seventh Seal”, the searching for the meaning of life was embodied by a nearly mythologized way.

*The film criticism was written by Simplified Chinese at first (which is my mother tongue), then I translated into English for your reading convenience. And down there is the original version.

闲着没事在美亚上看CC版的《芬妮与亚历山大》客户评价，其中最多人点赞的差评是一位来自伯格曼故乡的经济学博士：抱怨说花大钱买了碟后设备无法播放，评论下面众人都一致告知他说CC版蓝光碟本来就是锁A区。要不换台全区播放器要不就电脑上下个破解补丁；还有顾客大呼“这竟然不是一部圣诞专题电影！”…

在这部片长3个多小时的巨作中，伯格曼想要表现的当然不止圣诞佳节大家族团聚其乐融融的欢快场景。沿袭其早期的《野草莓》，透过外在事件传达出身处生命的开放性思考；这种内在探讨一直贯穿着他的整个电影生涯。特别是在其代表作《第七封印》中，对于生命意义的追寻被以一种近乎神话化的方式予以展现。

Lion On Films (Volume 1)

Frankly speaking, the film “Mulholland Dr.” is not that difficult to understand, what had David Lynch done is to disorganize the plot of a detailedly created complex case and remix it again.  The same “nonlinear narrative” pattern was successfully used in Christopher Nolan’s first film which was called “Following” already. The creating process is like to put the essential elements of a complete film (such as the characters, events and key items) into a giant blender, disintegrating, and then recombine them.

It seems to be pretty easy as saying, but the procedure will be quite hard to achieve. The smooth story-line at the origin was cut into pieces. Facing so many complex and non-logical human moods and story fragment, how to assemble them properly so as to make people understand the whole thing? And what makes the situation more perplexed is that the viewers have their own thinking methods. In contrast with the one or two story-branches of the mentioned film “Following”, “Mulholland Dr.” has such a bulky and complicated story structure. To control the operation on the whole level, which shows the extraordinary talent of the film director.

*The film criticism was written by Simplified Chinese at first (which is my mother tongue), then I translated into English for your reading convenience. And down there is the original version.

说到底，《穆赫兰道》其实并不难懂，大卫·林奇只是把一个精心虚构的复杂案件的情节打乱并重新拼凑。同样的非线性叙事风格，在克里斯托弗·诺兰的处女作《追随》中就已经成功尝试过。创作过程就像是将构成一部电影所需的完整元素（人物、事件、关键物）置入一台偌大的粉碎机中分解，再将之重新组合起来。

但是，说起来好像很简单，但是其中却充满了重重困难。原本流畅的故事主线被打断，面对如此繁复的非逻辑性的人物情绪与情节残片，应该如何组装才能令人能够理解？观众在观影时有着自己的思考。反观《追》仅是一、二条支线，而《穆》却是如此庞杂的故事架构。这样的整体性把控能力，正是导演的功力所在。

What’s On Your Wall? (Episode 1)

When you were invited to a new friend’s house, what will you see at the first sight?

“Er, Wait a second…” Yeah, I know for sure you are thinking, so I’d like to reveal my answer now. Of course, I am just a maverick person who don’t care your thought.

The first thing I saw commonly in a stranger’s house is the stuff hanging on the wall. Maybe it will be a painting, a photography, a basso-relievo, a diploma, a rifle, a bear skin, a moose head, a Chinese fan, a gaint dick or anything else, even you can’t name it.

“Iceland’s Penis Museum Curator on What ‘The Final Member’ Gets Wrong”

And now to be serious, the thing on the wall, which can be directly noticed by the everyone, generally shows the art taste and personal character of the house-owner. So, let’s see some photos to find out the fact.

*All the following images are collected from Internet.*

This is a quite modern space, we can see there are two fake paintings with the iconic style of Andy Warhol. Yes, there are counterfeits. As we all know, Andy Warhol usually didn’t paint a picture, he printed it. The process he used is call “silk-screen printing”, which can be understood through the following video:

The famous artworks by Andy Warhol was the Marilyn Monroe series. From this display we may realize the way of colour-using in the original paintings are obviously different from the ones mentioned above.

Although these are two imitation printings, due to the attractive words such as “Andy Warhol”, “Marilyn Monroe” and “Pop Art”, they reflects the modern climate. And these kind of art-pieces are normally regarded as a symbol of wealth for the crazy deal-prices in the auction. Besides, the delighted colour and beautiful celebrity make the viewers feel both joyful to eye and comfortable by heart.

To be continued in next episode…

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